Rahm Emanuel: D.C. hero, Chicago goat

CHICAGO — In Washington, he is “Rahmbo,” the ruthless, profane operative who survived the Clinton White House despite being vanquished by the first lady. In Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has been dubbed the “murder mayor” by one critic, a snipe at the city’s high homicide rate.

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In Washington, he’s the campaign mastermind who reportedly mused about a 2016 presidential run if Hillary Clinton takes a pass. In Chicago, he’s the ham-fisted gentrifer who’s been tripped up by the city’s entrenched racial politics.

In Washington, he’s the star of the CNN series “Chicagoland” — a careful keeper of his image whose office helped coordinate the show. In the real Chicago, a city known for its mobster history, his tough-guy veneer just isn’t as intimidating.

When Emanuel exited the Beltway in late 2010 to run for Chicago mayor, he had the tacit backing of a current president and the overt support of a former one. He won the race to succeed Richard M. Daley, and expectations ran high that Washington’s supreme enforcer was just the person to tame the Wild Midwest.

Now, just nine months out from the next election, Emanuel is unexpectedly vulnerable, with an approval rating that is perilously low. The comedown for the Illinois native, who terrified staffers and donors over more than a decade in Washington, has been striking. So has been the contrast between how he’s regarded in D.C., New York and Los Angeles — as opposed to some wards of Chicago.

A Chicago Sun-Times poll released last month showed that Emanuel would draw just 29 percent of the vote if the election were held then. His 8 percent showing in the survey among black voters, a crucial voting bloc for him last time, creates a truck-size hole for another candidate to drive through.

Emanuel still has the upper hand in his battle to retain his job. He has $7 million in the bank and the power of incumbency behind him. The one challenger who gives his supporters agita, Cook County Supervisor Toni Preckwinkle – an African-American woman with name recognition who could fare well in Chicago’s identity politics – has said she’s not running. She also hasn’t closed the door on the prospect, but her campaign account holds a tenth of the cash of Emanuel’s.

As his fundraising gears up for his campaign, Emanuel is hosting a high-dollar event on June 20 with Bill Clinton and indie band The Head and the Heart, according to an email invitation obtained by POLITICO.

Emanuel’s allies say that a Sun-Times poll is an outlier, although they concede he’s not in a comfortable position politically.

“He’s had his challenges,” said James Carville, who’s known Emanuel since the two worked for Bill Clinton. “I think he’ll win reelection but he’s got to run a good campaign. Nothing’s easy in politics.” Ultimately, Carville added, people “have a lot of faith in Rahm.”

Another Emanuel ally was blunt that his problem is as much his style as it is the substance of his message.

“There’s a straight-ahead quality to Rahm’s personality that allows him to get things done, but also can be off-putting,” the ally said.

Emanuel declined to be interviewed for this story. A spokeswoman provided this statement: “Leading a great city is a difficult job and there is much work left to do. But under Mayor Emanuel, Chicago is making steady progress in addressing the huge challenges that have built up over decades.”

Ben LaBolt, who was an aide to Emanuel in his first race, said the mayor has tackled “big, burning challenges at a turning point for the city. … The school day is longer and the graduation rate is higher, the murder rate is down after he reintroduced community policing, and he sliced the deficit in half while balancing the budget.”

Still, his adversaries smell blood and plan to make the most of the next year.

“I hope he loses, and I will work very hard to have somebody else [replace him],” said Karen Lewis, the African-American head of the Chicago Teachers Union. Emanuel was widely reported to have said “F—- you, Lewis” during a private meeting with her in 2012 about a new contract. (He did not deny it.)

“If you’ve seen any of the polling, he’s in serious trouble. No one seems to think that he’s doing a very good job. I think he is not suited to this kind of work,” said Lewis, who dubbed him “the murder mayor” last year after a big uptick in crime soon after he took office.

Some of the city’s problems are out of Emanuel’s control, and he’s tried hard to ease crime, with some success. He extended the school day for kindergartners, an achievement he frequently touts. But he’s had difficulty mastering the stagecraft needed to appease different constituencies in big-city politics.

Instead, Emanuel has approached the job like a latter-day Michael Bloomberg, a business-minded centrist without much interest in bending to opposition. Except unlike Bloomberg, he has no personal fortune with which to appease critics and enhance political friendships.

It’s a particularly difficult task at a time when income inequality has driven voters in Democratic-leaning cities further to the left. In Chicago, class politics fall along starkly racial lines.

Lewis recalled telling reporters that Emanuel had used the F-word with her, a move that fanned much of the initial anger among black voters against him. She noted that he demurred when asked by reporters whether he’d said it.

“And that’s where, if there were any stretch of the imagination of having any fear of Rahm Emanuel, it vanished at that moment,” she said. “Because I knew then he wasn’t the bad-ass he claimed to be.”

Succeeding Daley — a beloved figure whose family is etched into the fabric of the city — would be challenging even for a politician without Emanuel’s blunt edges. Daley, whose father was mayor before him, was skilled at the type of interest-group politicking that has bedeviled Emanuel.